


Return to Living

by hauntedshoes



Series: Crossroads [2]
Category: The Centricide (Webseries)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Existential Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, There is more than one of each ideology, headcanons, little bit on how ideologies come to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25619440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedshoes/pseuds/hauntedshoes
Summary: Ever since Minarchist found himself in the World of Ideas he had been lost and plagued by nightmares.Hoppean will help him find himself by combating his dreams.
Relationships: Minarchist/Hoppean
Series: Crossroads [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856995
Kudos: 22





	Return to Living

**Author's Note:**

> Reading the first part of this series 'Pinnacle: At the Edge' might help you understand the AU this fic takes place in a little better but's it's not necessary!

Political ideologies didn’t need to sleep, not exactly. They could survive without sleep, same with food or water, but without these things, they would become cranky and sickly. Operating on human systems of being, despite not quite having the bodies to go with it, meaning that food or sleep deprivation was still considered an issue.

Ideologies still tried to sleep for 8 hours a night and eat three meals a day, doing so made their lives more comfortable. Missing the odd night of sleep or not eating for a day wouldn’t likely knock their focus; it was only when this lack of self-care became continuous would eventually reach a point of severe discomfort.

Minarchist hadn’t slept in weeks.

Minarchist hated sleeping.

Minarchist pretended that it was all a part of the job and that he was happy being the Night-watchman, permanently. Every night. Every freaking night.

Then again, the general individualistic attitude in Ancapistan meant that most people seemed a little hesitant to remind him how much of a mess that he was. Not to mention, his under-functioning body lead to him to a poorly working night-watchman. Despite Minarchist and other’s like him contesting; otherwise, it seemed like the Ancap’s had the last words, and thus the justice system still remained private and belonged to them.

Minarchist called himself a night-watchman; he was much more like a vigilante. From afar, he probably seemed intimidating in that dark coat and boots, like a shadow against the painted sky waiting to destroy those who broke the NAP. The reality was quite different, he was demure, partly from his sheer lack of energy and partly because he really did feel that distant from people. That distance he had came from the fact that Minarchist’s years-old introduction to the World of Ideas was permeated by a sense of confusion.

He barely knew these streets, where they led and how they functioned. He didn’t even understand why the citizens were the way that they were. It wasn’t like the citizens of Ancapistan to tell stories but at least vaguely knowing what their powers entailed would have been a massive help to him. Heck, Minarchist was confused by the physical properties of his own existence. He didn’t exactly want to think about anyone else, but he was forced to think about himself, wasn’t he?

Constant worry, no sleep, Minarchist was bad at his job.

This further dug him into the metaphorical ditch that he was unable to live out his purpose.

Even though sleeping off this existential crisis would make him feel a whole lot better in a physical sense, it would have made his mental dread even worse.

Minarchist was plagued by nightmares.

A lot of the nightmares were incredibly vague, but they had never felt supernatural. It was as if Minarchist was putting pieces of a puzzle back together in his mind. However, those pieces would fall apart as soon as he woke up as he awoke from the terror.

He was haunted by the figure of an unknown person. Sometimes they would tell him kind words in a vaguely negative tone. Other times he would be running away from them without a word exchanged between either one of them. Other times Minarchist would find themselves lying dead at their feet. They would look into their eyes before his own left, and he would see his own colours reflected.

Minarchist would wake up shaking and terrified as if he was actually dying. Despite the lack of supernatural quality to the dreams, it still didn’t make sense for Ideologies to die like that to a single knife wound. Ideologies could stand much much worse than that. Many of them, especially those outside of Ancapistan, would engage is clearly dangerous micro-wars with their powers many of them leaving without a scratch. Minarchist shouldn’t be worried about what would be a simple flesh wound like he would face in a single night of work.

_Then why, why inside his dreams did it annihilate him like that?_

Minarchist’s general strange life rhythm of being active but entranced in the night and generally mulling around with nothing to do during the day didn’t garner him many friends. He knew how to be polite and believed he could be genuinely caring, but not many people would want to be friends with someone who could barely tell who and where he was half the time.

Well, Minarchist did have one friend at least. A specific Hoppean he seemed to care at least somewhat. Minarchist suspected that the only reason that he did is that he was one of the first people to find him when he had woken up here.

He didn’t want to think back to the day when all that uncertainty and confusion flooded his mind. Apparently, his reaction upon awakening had been unusual; Minarchist would have liked to agree with that statement as he had found himself running the streets with his pulse quickened just searching for what sense anything made. The lights of the sky and the lights of the city mixing together until they burnt into the skull. The Hoppean who had some amount of patience to answer his questions had made the world in his head turn a little slower.

They were both still in contact.

_Thank goodness they were both still in contact._

Then again, Hoppean wasn’t exactly the nicest person in the World of Ideas. Not the worst in Minarchist’s eyes but still dismissive and callous in ways which bothered him. Then again, if this was the only person that he could speak to, then he’d gladly take it. With all the coldness he had, he had still cured the heat of the stress that was the founding of his existence.

Minarchist had to tell him about the nightmares.

Minarchist had to get an answer.

Nevertheless, Hoppean was always found in the same sorts of places. He seemed to like overlooking the water. His deep-set dark eyes would have a thoughtful expression on his face until he turned around to face Hoppean fully.

Minarchist still wondered if that whole ‘throwing people into the ocean’ thing was a metaphor or a literal statement. 

Hoppean, in comparison to Minarchist, seemed to enjoy high places. Even though they were required for his choice of career, Minarchist was still confounded by an inescapable sense of vertigo.

The skyscrapers in Ancapistan were tall enough so that almost the whole of what could be called the ocean could be seen from the top of them, but then again, so could the barrier. The colourful sparking dangerous thing wasn’t exactly good for what Minarchist intended for being a peaceful and reassuring conversation with a close friend. Then again, the lights did have a story to tell. If everything in the world of ideas was connected by symbolism, then perhaps his nightmares could too be connected to the lights.

He wasn’t sure if Hoppean was expected guest, loner he was, he probably never had guests.

_Would he even reject his best friend if he turned up uninvited?_

“Hoppean?” he called out.

“Huh, Minarchist?”

“I want to talk to you if just for a bit, here with me.”

Hoppean turned, he stopped looking at the water, he shot fire at Minarchist with his glare. Discomfort ran through him. “I have all the time you need, I guess…”

Hoppean laughed as he walked over, making Minarchist walk back with hesitation. Until he sat down, Hoppean copied, and then the two of them were under the lights of the sky together. The gateway between ideas and chaos, undeath and life a finger touch away.

“Can we discuss something personal, please, Hoppean.”

“Personal is not my forte, I’m sure you’re aware.” Hoppean’s eyes looked left to right, and then looked up and stared. “But for you, I’m sure I can try.”

“I’ve been having nightmares, too many nightmares, the kind of nightmares that stop me sleeping entirely.”

Minarchist waited for Hoppean to laugh or to simply get up and walk away, leaving Minarchist alone again.

Hoppean instead, shrugged before simply asking him: “What kind of nightmares?”

Minarchist gulped. “Uh, ones where I’m dying, ones where I keep dying, but not to another ideology, either to a shadow or to someone who looks just like I do.”

Minarchist shifted uncomfortably, Hoppean was still shockingly undeterred.

“You are killing yourself? Like a dying dream?”

“A dying dream which always wakes me up, one which lasts a few minutes at most but then means that the rest of the day, or night, or whatever ambiguous frame of time I’m trying to rest my head goes on forever.”

Minarchist guessed that Hoppean didn’t have many nightmares and barely had any dreams either. As far as Minarchist was aware, most Ideologies in the World of Ideas didn’t have dreams, and when they did, they could understand them almost instantly. Spending several hundred years on a literal, symbolic plane tended to give a good understanding of your own psyche’s use of symbolism.

But Minarchist was not hundreds of years old, not yet, he was maybe thirty maximum? Extremely young for a denizen of the World of Ideas. He could only guess the level of experience that Hoppean had in comparison to him with deciphering himself.

_Was throwing people in the ocean metaphorical or literal?_

_Hoppean knew what he was doing, it had to be the literal ocean._

_That man must have been a murderer in another life._

“Why would someone of the same Ideology hurt you to the point of murder? You don’t have that strong of in-fighting, do you? I mean if you did, the whole of Ancapistan would know, wouldn’t it?”

Minarchist only nodded in response.

Hoppean twisted his head, he nearly stood up but only drew in closer. “You’re not afraid of yourself, are you?”

“I can’t be… that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

Hoppean shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t make sense would it now, but you aren’t exactly normal are you Minarchist.”

_Judging by his tone of inflexion, Hoppean had meant that as a term of judgement._

“I guess I’m not.” Minarchist folded his arms coyly.

“Most people know what they’re getting into when they come here, I’ve never seen someone so confused about this before, to be honest, it’s a little funny.”

“You helped me way back when simply because you thought it was funny?”

Hoppean started laughing, he just started laughing. The man Minarchist thought was so cold and cool started laughing.

“It sort of was, you were running scared like someone was chasing you. You kept crashing into landmarks because you couldn’t tell if they were real or not. Then you started sobbing. Nobody was talking to you; they all just kind of looked at you sadly, but I didn’t ignore you. Couldn’t have your hysterics messing up Ancapistan, could we? Someone had to do something…”

Minarchist huffed but knew it would be stupid to walk away from Hoppean now, he still saw him as a friend. Minarchist didn’t have anybody else.

Now that they thought about it, it seemed that they had always been alone.

Almost as far back as in… a time he didn’t remember.

Minarchist was growing tired somehow. He thought that it must have been the lights of the sky changing as they did in a way that was playing on his mind. This high-up their colours were normally not only inconsistent but bright and garish, fuzzy, yet approaching linear.

They seemed very different from the other times Minarchist had looked at them. They seemed to be colouring themselves grey or even black. Their linearity became softer, but still, grid-like. They looked less tense but bleaker. He kept staring at them, expecting them to change back.

Hoppean wasn’t reacting to whatever change was going on above him despite very obviously staring at them before.

Even though Hoppean and his scouring expression, had just mocked him. Minarchist was starting to feel safer, a lot safer.

Hoppean was safe, despite everything he was.

He was perhaps one of the few safe things in this entire messed up world. There was no reason for that.

Minarchist yawned. Hoppean threw him a questioning glance.

“I thought you couldn’t sleep, Minarchist, why are you…”

Minarchist hadn’t realised how groggy he was and how calm he had gotten. Minarchist being used to so many nights feeling as if he was charged by some electric wire. This place and the face of the man who had both mocked him and helped was bringing Minarchist to realisation.

If he really was that tired, then he must have eventually passed out. Even if he wasn’t a human, some base reaction, some of the small shreds of humanity that were still inside him would eventually kick in and force him to sleep. Stupid ideology bodies weren’t as immutable as they should have been.

“Minarchist!”

Minarchist was falling asleep, and Hoppean was right there next to him.

Minarchist had probably fallen in his lap and not realised. He was looking up at his face as he shut his eyes. The sky seemed to him like a black grid of shooting stars. The white noise of the barrier’s abyss had faded.

Prone to cruelty or not, Minarchist had a friend with him this time, so perhaps this time would be different. Maybe this time, Minarchist would sleep.

-

_The house was silent. It was always was that way when he returned from college after his 7am lectures._

_Sadly, the silence was heavy, and it had only grown heavier over those weeks._

_He hadn’t expected to make friends, let alone with a ghost who later came to tell him that he had made himself a part of him._

_He didn’t exactly believe in souls but had now become convinced that their souls were linked somehow. They wouldn’t leave him alone._

_This didn’t seem all the bad at first. They had seemed like a friend._

_For some kind of ethereal being that came from who knows where the person that he had been encouraged to call ‘Minarchist’ was receptive to him who also identified as a Minarchist._

_But not on the weird spiritual-symbolic level that wherever his ghost-friend had come from. He was a political Minarchist, he had guessed that is why this symbolic entity had visited him in the first place._

_The two of them had initially shared ideas with one another. Agreed with one another’s worldviews and concepts._

_He had been one of those people who was scared to share their views on a college campus, so it was nice to have someone to sit and discuss, reinforce their beliefs and generally feel as if they had a home away from home. It was nice to have someone to share even his deepest thoughts with who was in front of him and not over some kind of screen._

The being that would become Minarchist didn’t have a clue that not all guides that came from the World of Ideas were as friendly as they seemed.

_What had at first seemed so delightful turned out to become darker and darker, until it was a tragedy._

So that ideologies may make more of themselves they need to make sure their ideas are alive on Earth and in the minds of humans: when a human believes in something hard enough, they can become an ideology too.

Ideologies, however, not beings of tangible reality could not do this with a mortal body hanging around. Most would make sure that they would stay with their humans, their muse, a ghost, for their whole lives but a small collect of others grew bored with the humans they had chosen to guide. Ideology was often no guide for overall morality.

_He didn’t bother to look around the sitting room. He didn’t want to sit and study and listen to that ghost that had called itself ‘Minarchist’ talk to him anymore._

_They would appear there to him and ramble first about relevant things, but it later would devolve into threats, intimidation. Their golden eyes would flash, and he would feel himself falling away._

_He had told them that he didn’t want to talk anymore and that even though he cared, he wanted them out of his life as much as possible. They had refused._

_Instead of going into the sitting room, he headed for the stairs, a big mistake._

_The house was silent, but the sound of the cracking wooden stairs pounded through the eardrums and into the mind._

The muse he had known as ‘Minarchist’ was standing at the very top of the stairs.

_“So, you initially decided to ignore me today?”_

_“I’m not ignoring you if I want you out my life… for good!”_

_“Those are brave words for a mortal human, aren’t they?”_

_He had no idea how to respond to that question._

_He had never had a clear idea of how tangible his muse, Minarchist, was sometimes the blue and yellow figure would be seen passing through objects, but other times they were able to hold onto books, teacups, coffee mugs. He wanted to try and run past him was, expectedly, stopped._

_He wasn’t stopped by the body of Minarchist, but rather the knife he was holding._

_The stairway creaked as he lived out what he saw in his own eyes: him falling away._

_It was far enough away in his hazy memory that he couldn’t remember the pain: by comparison, he was probably lucky._

_He remembered the falling from the highest point of his old home’s stairwell and collapsing before his former muse of gold and blue._

_He looked down at himself in the last moments of his dream, he was still human this time. The separate entities: they who were Minarchist and he who would become Minarchist stared at one another._

-

The being who became Minarchist woke up again. He touched Hoppean’s face as he looked down at him. The sky was light and dark at once. At that moment, he realised that how he came to Ancapistan didn’t matter if there was still someone that cared.


End file.
